Corporate Rebels: Make work more fun

By Joost Minnaar and Pim de Morree

8 radical lessons from 100 of the world’s most inspiring companies

Today’s workplaces are broken. Badly broken. With 85% of employees disengaged, 23% feeling burned out and 37% believing that their job makes no useful contribution to society, work as we know it today is simply not working.

The go

• Language: English
• Publisher: CORPORATE REBELS NEDERLAND B.V.
• Release date: Feb 2, 2020
• ISBN: 9789083004815

Joost Minnaar

Joost Minnaar kündigte seinen Konzernjob in Barcelona, um die Corporate Rebels mitzugründen. Zuvor hatte er an der Universität Barcelona einen Masterabschluss in Nanowissenschaften und Nanotechnologie erworben. Heute bereist er die Welt auf der Suche nach progressiven Organisationen, teilt seine Erkenntnisse in Blog- Beiträgen und berät Unternehmen in Arbeitsplatzfragen. Zudem ist Joost Doktorand am Amsterdam Business Research Institute der Freien Universität Amsterdam.

Book preview

Introduction

Plunging in

Ventura, southern California. It’s 6:30am on a deserted beach off Highway 1, the lovely and meandering road we have been following for three weeks, stopping where the mood takes us. We roll out of the campervan and walk across the cold sand to the even colder waters of the Pacific Ocean, where two dolphins are playing, and a few early surfers are bobbing on their boards. In the half-light, we look out over the water. The morning couldn’t be more beautiful – and here’s the best part: we’re here in our official capacity. It’s a weekday, a workday, and just another day for Corporate Rebels.

We knew a long time ago that we wouldn’t be stuck in steady jobs for 40 years. We craved something more. Something exciting. Something adventurous. What we didn’t realise when we made the decision – months and miles away in Spain – was that escaping the corporate grind would be quite so easy; as easy as it is for those dolphins to flip out of a wave. Our real working life begins here, and man, it feels good.

In the summer of 2015, in a crowded beer garden in Barcelona, we talked about work – the work we were doing then. It was a rather sad conversation, because the bottom line was that our jobs were uninspiring at best. Work was making us anything but happy. Mondays to Fridays were spent counting down to the weekend, and that’s not something anyone should be doing for 40 hours per week.

What made it worse was the fact that we weren’t frustrated with the work itself. It was interesting, challenging, and a good fit for the engineering degrees we had completed. What was driving us nuts was the way our employers arranged things. That, and the fact that we were treated like children. There was no sense of freedom. The 9 to 5 mentality ensured that we were judged for the hours spent in the office, rather than what we did when we were there. It was frustrating to be forced to follow archaic and outdated procedures and protocols that held no room for creativity, offered no leeway. But what to do? Our corporate experience thus far entailed writing reports, which would disappear in a drawer to gather dust for a decade or two. There was a complete lack of appreciation for any sliver of lateral thinking or entrepreneurship. Any idea that might poke the status quo in the ribs was immediately shot down. We weren’t experienced in the ways of business, but we knew we could set out on our own if we could just think what, exactly, we should do.

Ever since our university days we had been fascinated by pioneers, the brave souls who tackled work in a radically different way. We were inspired by companies that kept their employees engaged and connected. Our interest was sparked by a documentary about Brazilian entrepreneur Ricardo Semler. Semler made his machine factory, Semco, into a grand success in the 1980s by breaking rules and trashing all those conventions we had come to despise. Semco had no time for managers, unnecessary meetings, and pointless regulations. Employees had the freedom to determine their work hours – and their salary. We found more inspiration in the philosophies of workplace gurus such as Simon Sinek and Dan Pink. We dived into the extraordinary company cultures of Google and Spotify. There was a seemingly unbridgeable chasm between these inspiring stories and the drudgery of our day-to-day lives.

How did these progressive organisations function? What did they do differently, and how could others manage to make a change? Under the sunny skies of Barcelona, we reached a decision we have never regretted. And now, because of what we committed to then, over cervezas in Barcelona, we’re here in Ventura, ready to plunge into the waves and our working life. We didn’t do what our families, or society, expected of us. We quit our jobs with a vague but thrilling plan. We would travel the world, find the pioneers, and learn from them. Then we would share what they shared with us, in the hope that the message is heard.

Here’s the message: Work can be fun. Work should be fun. I mean, just look at us, watching the sun come up in Ventura as the dolphin tussle in the waves, and surfers jockey for position. We’re working, and it’s wonderful. We’re here to meet the first of our pioneers, to poke around in his brain and his soul and his management plan. But first we’re going to dive into the water with him, and join the ranks of surfers waiting for that perfect California wave…

FROM COASTER TO COAST

Our bucket List began life as a Barcelona beermat, when we jotted down the names of those who inspired us. Naturally, Ricardo Semler was at the top of our list. But Richard Branson, Spotify, Simon Sinek, Google, and Dan Pink quickly followed. Our Bucket List became more refined with time, a list of progressive organisations, entrepreneurs, academics and writers who have something to teach the world about radically different ways of working. We wanted to see and speak to all of them and share everything that we learned on a blog.

We had to choose a name for ourselves and after kicking a few around, decided that Corporate Rebels not only sounded good, but also summed up our basic stance. By the time we left that Catalan beer garden, after a good few hours and a good few beers, we were convinced by the potential of our idea. And while we remained convinced, in the cold light of day, that the potential was real, not everyone agreed. Conversations with friends, family and colleagues tended to follow the same basic script:

It all sounds wonderful, but how on earth will you make your money?

We didn’t really have a clue, so that was always a tricky one.

So you’re going to travel the world, searching for the most progressive organisations… but you don’t know how you’re going to make your money?

That just about covered it. That was the plan. And while it was a wonderful idea, it wasn’t a business plan. We didn’t yet realise that wonderful ideas without business plans do not inspire much faith, but we discovered it soon enough. But hey, how could we focus on making money if we didn’t even know anything about the topic? We opted to just start, learning from the best and figuring out what opportunities it would provide later. We were quietly convinced that the idea was sound. We believed in our purpose, our mission to make work more fun. Money wasn’t our inspiration.

After we had pooled our savings, we calculated what we could do. We reckoned we had enough to cover ourselves for about 10 months. We’d have to change our lifestyle, because steady income would no longer be a thing. What was the worst that could happen? That our idea wasn’t as good as we thought? That nobody was looking for the stories we would be sharing? That we discovered that we totally sucked at writing? That we would burn through our savings and have nothing to show for it? Those were all possibilities – but if they represented the worst that could happen… that’s not too bad. We were privileged to have had a decent education, so if it went to the wall, we could always find other jobs. We would have gained some valuable experience. So, we added the figures up again, and found ourselves in agreement: This adventure wasn’t entirely practical, but it was too good to pass up.

Shortly after the notion of Corporate Rebels was born, we handed in our notice, moved into a small apartment and lived together to save costs; we could no longer afford the luxury of two flats, and that room became the humble base for our embryonic project. For the next couple of months, everything we did, we did from there. We built our website, made plans for our Bucket List trips, read countless books on management, and started living the Corporate Rebels life.

We did the research and soon found out that we were not the only ones completely disengaged from work. Studies show that a lack of engagement with employees is a major issue all over the world. We were expecting this, but the reality is way worse than we thought. The research institute Gallup, which has been measuring employee engagement for years, and in over 150 countries, has come up with some numbers that shocked us. Worldwide, only 15 percent of employees feel engaged with the work they do. That means that the majority is disengaged every day. Within this group, there are employees who are so frustrated that they go out of their way to sabotage their workplace. These saboteurs make up 18 percent of the workforce. Studies in our native Netherlands have shown that just one in 10 employees is involved and engaged. Those statistics put us in the majority as part of the unhappy niners — along with our friends, our neighbours, our relatives, our parents. We discovered that we live in a world where the majority gets little or no satisfaction from their daily grind¹.

That only 15 percent of all employees are engaged at work is something that should be addressed. Although many organisations seem to be aware of this, it does little to spur them on to change. Which is strange, because Gallup estimates that globally, $7 trillion – more than half of China’s GDP – is wasted in lost productivity thanks to disengagement. Despite this, the focus of traditional firms remains on performance, especially on money and output. Engagement is a nice-to-have, not a must-have.

We believed, and statistics and studies have proved, that a company with engaged employees will show better financial returns than a company staffed by unmotivated and unhappy people. Put yourself in the equation: you probably perform much better when doing things that you enjoy and find rewarding. It is simple. When work is exciting and motivating, people thrive and companies flourish. This is not just our belief – it is a verified fact proven by various surveys. A meta-study by Gallup highlights several positive influences on organisational success, showing that workplaces with high employee engagement seriously outperform the rest. Engaging workplaces enjoy significantly higher profitability, productivity and customer satisfaction. They also have lower staff turnover, less absenteeism and fewer accidents². Moreover, the findings are highly consistent across organisations, industries and regions of the world. Not surprisingly, being on Glassdoor´s list of Best Places to Work (companies with the highest ratings from employees) is linked to superior financial performance. Investing in an engaged and inspired workforce doesn’t just sound like a good idea, it most certainly is. Companies with well engaged employees really do outperform their peers. There is a direct correlation between a more engaged workforce and enhanced company performance³ ⁴ ⁵.

In our little room we found one fascinating study providing compelling financial evidence: stock performance of progressive organisations based on three portfolios. A stock portfolio of public companies from Glassdoor’s Best Places to Work list, one from public companies from Fortune’s 100 Best Companies to Work For list and one based on the average of the overall S&P 500 market. The study shows that the stock portfolio of Glassdoor and that of the Fortune 100 substantially outperformed the overall S&P 500 market in five out of six years. For a robustness check, the researchers also looked at the returns among public companies with the lowest employee ratings on Glassdoor. They found that these companies broadly underperformed the S&P 500⁶.

Now that we were convinced that having an engaged workforce is a very good idea, the next step was to find out how it is possible that most organisations still work in ways that create such a huge disengagement problem. We soon discovered that the laws of management obeyed in most of today’s workplaces were created during the previous century. At school we learned the basic laws of physics and chemistry which were pretty much indisputable, but we now found that the laws of management are of a different sort: they all seem to be highly disputable. Management gurus seem to agree on one thing: the history of the traditional laws of management. All modern texts tell more-or-less the same story. They point to Frederick Winslow Taylor, an early 20th century American who started the so-called Scientific Management Revolution and should take credit for the outdated principles which were developed during and after this revolution. For more than a century, Taylor and his ilk unleashed a quest for optimal workplace efficiency. The result is that most businesses still run on principles that are dated and hardly optimised for today.

In the 19th century, the world faced major problems in the workplace including staggering inefficiency, a gulf between poor workers and rich bosses, and an epidemic of worker disengagement. The workplace problems created tension. At one point there was a sort of Mexican standoff. This was a hot topic for the thinkers of the time. Everyone was talking about unavoidable workplace disruption. Karl Marx, for one, predicted a class war. He argued that suppression of the working class would inevitably lead to a revolution. Marx was right. The 19th century workplace problems did trigger a revolution, but of a totally different kind. What defeated these prophecies, was not the much-anticipated revolution of the frustrated working class, but the one started by Frederick Winslow Taylor.

In a nutshell, Taylor’s book, The Principles of Scientific Management, argues that thinking work should be separated from doing work, with managers tackling the former. Taylor’s theory is known as the one best way. It advocates that every job should be reduced to a scientifically detailed, simple, repeatable and mechanical set of activities that any worker could understand. Taylor is followed by a number of other bureaucrats including Henri Fayol, a French mining executive who came up with

Reviews for Corporate Rebels

[Zulhilmi Hamzah · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Fantastic and inspiring read! It was not easy to not stop reading.